Ovidio Gabriel Assonitis (born January 18, 1943) is an Egyptian-born Greco-Italian entertainment executive, film producer, screenwriter, and director best known for his numerous B-horror films including Beyond the Door, Tentacles, The Visitor, and Piranha II: The Spawning. Early life and career In the mid-1960s, Assonitis began an extensive distribution network company in the Far East and in the 10-year period distributed more than 900 films from offices in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia. His former partners and associates include HRH Prince Anusom Yukol (brother of the King of Thailand), John Litton (President of Mever Films, theater owner and former President of the Philippines Film Festival), the Shaw Brothers, Alexander Tedja, and Kong Cho Yee (of Edko Films). Independent producing career By the late 1960s, Assonitis began producing films himself with the documentary The Labyrinth of Sex and the giallo thriller Who Saw Her Die? which was released at the height of the giallo genre. The same year as Who Saw Her Die?, Assonitis released one of his early successes, Man from the Deep River. The film and its title were mainly inspired by A Man Called Horse, which also featured a white man who is incorporated into a tribe that originally held him captive. The film is the first of the subgenre of Italian Cannibal movies that were made in the late 70s and early 80s The following year, Assonitis produced The Last Snows of Spring. The film obtained a great commercial success, particularly in the United Kingdom and launched the career of child actor Renato Cestiè. Assonitis then tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase the screen rights to William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. Assonitis then hired a succession of writers to create an original possession story, which ultimately became Beyond the Door. The film marked Assonitis' directorial debut, under his oft used pseudonym, Oliver Hellman. The film was originally set to be released by American International Pictures, Assonitis' long-term American partners; the film was picked up and released by Edward L. Montoro and his company Film Ventures International, it was a huge commercial success in the United States, where it earned $15 million at the US box office and grossing in excess of $40 million world-wide. Warner Bros. promptly filed a lawsuit, claiming copyright infringement due to similarities to The Exorcist. He returned to producing with Laure, an original film based on the experiences of Emmanuelle Arsan, who wrote